AVX November 2019 Update

Ahmet-Hamdi Cavusoglu

November 1, 2019

Happy Hallowmas! (That's what you say after Happy Halloween, right?) As always, thank you for being a valuable part of the network. In this newsletter, we will tell you a bit about our newest connections, our latest match, highlight Equalize 2020, and give you some news and events from around the network.

As a reminder, you can see all AVX opportunities here at the Feed.

                   The AVX Feed                

Conversation Statistics: We are up to 4095 total connections and conversations on the AVX network - 236 more over the last month. We are currently tracking 9 potential match negotiations and another 67 with multi-month long discussions heading toward possible matches. Please see the attached AVX Data for more information.

Latest Match: We are thrilled to announce that Wardenclyff Chemicals has matched up with Vine Robot Technologies from University of California, Santa Barbara! Wardenclyff Chemicals is made up of George Boyajian, Eric Anderson, and Jason Stieg and they are excited to continue developing a "soft robot" for automatic tracheal intubation. Congratulations!

NEWS

Equalize 2020: Equalize 2020 is a pitch competition and symposium designed to take national action around the disparity of women academic inventors forming university startups. This event (spearheaded by Nichole Mercier at WUSTL and Kirsten Leute at OUP) will provide a platform to select, coach, and promote women inventors with startup technology to engage the investor and corporate community, building networks and creating a sustainable effort to drive women-founded university startups.

The deadline to submit an application to pitch is November 15: https://equalize.wustl.edu/pitch/

Want to get involved?  Contact Kristen Otto – kristenotto@wustl.edu

Recruiting Talent for University Startups: Continuing the Conversation: OUP received a multitude of follow-up questions to their webinar on Recruiting Talent for University Startups this summer, so OUP reconnected with the webinar panelists to continue the conversation. If you are interested to learn more from Mike, Hazel, and myself - I recommend you take a look!

Extreme Tech Challenge 2020: XTC is focused around investable commercial ventures that also make a real impact on furthering one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals grouped into these 7 categories: 1) AgTech-Food-Water, 2) Smart Cities-Transport, 3) Cleantech-Energy 4) Education, 5) Healthcare, 6) Fintech, and 7) enabling technologies (like chips, 5G, IOT, AI, etc.) If you'd like to learn more, feel free to ask!

EVENTS

SEBIO (Nov 6, Miami): The conference in Miami provides an unparalleled opportunity to meet key decision makers in the regional and national life science and medical technology communities. More than 300 biotech and medtech investors, corporate executives, university representatives, and entrepreneurs will attend the event this year. This is a rich opportunity to showcase your company at the most significant annual life science conference in the Southeast.

BioInc@NYMC (Nov 6, Valhalla): Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator is a new, competitive entry, 6-month long program designed to provide entrepreneurship education and regional networking to seed-stage ventures to build their teams and secure funds. Innovators with therapeutics, diagnostics, devices, research tools, digital health and materials technology breakthroughs are invited to apply. You do not need a company to apply.

Life Sciences Summit (Nov 6-7, NYC): This is an early stage investor and business development conference that highlights innovation. The objective of the event is to connect emerging biotech companies and academic innovators with the capital and strategic partners they will need to move new discoveries through clinical development. Many great AVX community members will be presenting and speaking here, if you have a chance to attend, please check it out!

VC Healthtech Investing at NEA (Dec 5, SF): Have a chance to learn more about NEA's Healthtech investing from Tak Cheung. Tak joined NEA in 2018 as a Principal on the healthcare team. He focuses on medical device investments. Prior to NEA, Tak was a Venture Partner at Merieux Development Venture Fund and was co-founder of Lexington Medical.

Yale Life Sciences Pitchfest (Dec 6, New Haven): Giving you all an extended heads up on Yale's upcoming Life Science Pitch Day - these teams will feed into their short list of Blavatnik awards. If you are interested to see these teams early, be sure to hold the day.

Yale Innovation Summit (May 13, New Haven): Yale’s premier tech and biotech event, with over 1000 attendees, 100 investment opportunities, 160 investors, and dozens of leading corporations. This year we are moving to an even bigger venue – Yale’s brand new science building on “Science Hill”. Hold the date!

Equalize 2020 (June 24-25, St. Louis): Equalize 2020 is a pitch competition and symposium designed to take national action around the disparity of women academic inventors forming university startups.

So long for now! – Hamdi